


always

by foundCarcosa



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-20
Updated: 2015-02-20
Packaged: 2018-03-13 21:50:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 827
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3397577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foundCarcosa/pseuds/foundCarcosa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's always more to the story, but only Lucius could tell it, now.</p>
            </blockquote>





	always

"Wait!"  
Narcissa stopped to stare questioningly at them both; they’d passed over the bridge away from the war-torn school without further incident, which was miraculous in itself. She couldn’t fathom what her husband and her son would have to pause about, when they were so close to safety.

Draco glanced up at his father, pale and uncertain.

"I can’t leave him," he stammered, feeling foolish as he said it, but knowing he meant it.

"I can’t leave _him,”_ Lucius murmured to Narcissa, who closed her eyes and sighed.

"He’s probably dead," she countered, opening her eyes and flicking them towards Draco, "not Harry, obviously, but… Lucius, you know all too well…"

"I can’t have failed him," Lucius whispered, desperately.

"You weren’t meant to protect him, he is his own man."

"How could you say that?" Lucius flung his arms wide, his hands open, his expression incredulous. "I’ve protected him from the beginning!"

\-----------------------

They’d been years apart, Lucius arrogant and haughty and far too pretty with his gleaming prefect badge over a narrow but puffed chest, and Severus gaunt and twitchy, his voice barely audible over the clamour of other first-years.

"Oi. New Snake. What is your name?" Lucius asked, mischievously curious, his gemstone eyes gleaming as he passed them over the much shorter child.

"Severus," he mumbled. "Snape."

"Severus Snake!" Lucius crowed delightedly, and Severus twitched, his fingers drumming the air restlessly before curling into small, anxious fists. He wouldn’t look at Lucius, who leaned down to peer interestedly into the first-year’s sallow face. "No, no… Severus the _Spider._ Spider Snape. _That_ will be your name.”

It stuck even after Lucius progressed into his sixth and seventh years, becoming quieter and more imperious, his eyes sharper and more cunning, his smile less mischievous and more mocking. Horace Slughorn adored him, and always counselled him against keeping company with “ordinary rabble like that Snape boy”.

"There is nothing _ordinary_ about Spider,” Lucius would snap, looking away, his displeasure almost petulant in the set of his jaw and the lift of his chin.  
He was the only one who thought so, and he accepted the crusade with grace.

Lucius was out of school when he heard that Severus, much like himself, had received an Outstanding on every one of his O.W.L.s. “Of course he did,” Lucius shrugged, unfazed, whilst his school friends marvelled.

At Malfoy Manor, Severus seemed to shrink into himself, although Lucius saw a hungry look in his dark eyes as he studied the frescoes and columns, the gleam of obsidian and the richness of mahogany, the filigree delicacy of fine silverware and the historical weight of antique statuary. But he flinched away from his own reflection in glassware polished to perfection. 

Lucius took Severus’ pointed chin in his ringed hand and made Severus hold his gaze.

"You listen too much to what the world says you are." Lucius tried to sound glib yet authoritative, but all Severus heard was the tremble of frustrated anger in his voice. "To _hell_ with them, Spider. _You_ know who you are and what you can do. Only you.”

When the time came, they joined the Death Eaters together.

\-----------------------

"There is nothing you can do," Narcissa declared firmly, taking Lucius’ elbow with the intent of pulling him away, back to their task. "You have to let him go now. You _have_ to!”

"I will do no such thing," Lucius said quietly, glancing back at the school, and Draco felt his heart lift — after all the times he’d felt distant from his father, this moment seemed to make up for all of it.

Lucius and Draco parted ways when they crossed the bridge and reached the flung-open doors of Hogwarts — Draco began to duck and weave through the spellstorm in the main halls, looking for Harry, and Lucius headed straight for the dungeons.

"Severus. Find me Severus Snape," he murmured to the pulsing spell wisp he conjured, and followed it at a trot as it zoomed away.

There was still some vestige of soul left in the body the spell wisp led him to, but the wisp bobbed uncertainly as if not quite sure of its accuracy. Lucius dismissed it with a choked word, already falling to his knees beside the venom-riddled corpse.

"Spider," he whispered, his head bowed, "my friend, _mon coeur, mein Herz._ I will atone for my cowardice, I swear it. For my son, and for you. I will… I…”

But there were no more words to squeeze past the growing stone in his throat and the fiery pain in his chest, so he succumbed, collapsing to the floor next to Severus’ still white body, too wretched to sob, too wretched to do anything but sit there, blank-eyed and slack-jawed, with tears streaking through the soot on his pale, unshaven face.

He had fallen into an exhausted sleep when Narcissa found him, his head lolled on Severus’ shoulder and his fingers curled tight around Severus’ own.


End file.
